A brief jaunt through Europe
When you’ve recently spent three months in West Africa and most of your travelling life in the Third World, you realise that Western Europe really is quite fun after all. Sure, it’s not exciting culturally or religiously the same way Asia is, but at least things work, the electricity doesn’t go off every night and there are pretty buildings to look at…
Anyway, we certainly realised our honeymoon was over when we spent all night on a bus leaving Sevilla, northbound for Madrid (and then back southbound for an hour to Toledo, which is the only way you can get there). We spent the next few days in the historic towns of Toledo, Ávila and Segovia. Segovia was my favourite of the three – we went to see the famous Roman aqueduct but the town offers lots more than that, including a fairytale castle, an impressive Gothic cathedral and several other beautiful sandstone churches. We didn’t get to spend as long in Ávila as we liked, and it was raining more or less the whole time we were there, but nevertheless I thought it had pretty much the most impressive medieval city walls I’ve ever seen. (This thought lasted precisely three days, until we got to Carcassonne. See below.)
We spent our last night in Spain in Barcelona. We’d both been there before, and I liked it the first time, but this time it struck me as a dirty and seedy place, and I don’t really get why everyone raves about it. The Andalucian cities are infinitely more enjoyable places to spend time in, with far better sites and nightlife/entertainment that’s at least comparable. Anyway, Barca was just a stopover on our way to France, really, so we didn’t mind it so much.
The next day we crossed the border – though you don’t really cross borders in Europe, you just realise at some point that you’re not in the same country you were in the last time you looked (and since four of our five West African crossings were nightmares, this EU deal is kind of fun). Carcassonne in the south of France is a magnificent old city that belongs in fairytales, with its stone walls and towers topped with orange witches’ hats. It was naturally pretty touristy but I didn’t mind because the walls, towers and castle were so magnificent and very photogenic.
We next headed to Nimes for its first century AD Roman two-tiered amphitheatre and temple, both in fabulous condition and well worth seeing, and then to Avignon, another enjoyable town with a famous bridge and lots of other medieval relics. Our last stop in France was a picturesque canal town called Annecy close to the Swiss border.
Being so close to Switzerland, we thought we’d duck in to see my friends Sally and Denis in Lausanne. We had a really nice time with them and the weather cleared up enough for us to do some hiking in the beautiful Jungfrau region as well.
After that, the ‘extended’ honeymoon unfortunately came to an end. We’re now living in Utrecht, a city in the Netherlands, working for a month at Infostrada Sports headquarters. It’s really quite an attractive town and we’re enjoying it so far; hopefully we’ll be able to see a bit of the country while we’re here, starting with Amsterdam tomorrow. Then, at the end of July we’ll move to Paris for three months for our RWC2007 project.
Meanwhile, loads of pictures of Europe and more of the Arabia/Africa journey are now on the web here.
Tags: Europe, France, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, Travel
Nick
Hey Nick, well you’ve certainly whet my appetite for my stay in Switzerland!!! Only a couple of months to go before I’m there! All the best. SAM